To keep up with the changing times, graduate education in the physical sciences is getting a makeover at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Thanks to a new agreement, UC Davis plans to offer more education and training opportunities across a greater number of scientific disciplines at the lab. "We need to look to the future needs of the laboratory and UC," said Professor Richard Freeman, chair of the applied science department that operates the academic program in Livermore. "The driver is the changing nature of the laboratory. "During the Cold War years, the main purpose of applied science was to provide physicists trained in physics relevant to weapons work," he said. He noted that Edward Teller, creator of the hydrogen bomb, created the applied science department in 1963 at the Livermore national lab as a way to bring promising young scientists into the highly specialized field of weapons physics. (Teller also founded the Livermore lab.) Lab veterans still refer to the department as "Teller Tech." The UC Davis College of Engineering helped set up and has provided leadership for the academic department at Livermore, where Teller was the first chair. "This relationship worked very well for many years, with over 270 Ph.D.s being granted from the Department of Applied Science, and with many other students taking courses leading to degrees in other departments," said Jeff Wadsworth, director of Lawrence Livermore, in the March 19 issue of Newsline, the weekly lab newspaper. In late 1997, Wadsworth asked a committee to take a fresh look at the relationship between the lab and the campus. "They considered the changes that have occurred since 1963 in how the lab conducts its missions; in how our surrounding society and its infrastructure have changed; and in how our professional scientific and engineering staff are trained and hired," Wadsworth said. The committee noted that the laboratory has broader communications with the outside world and that it needs a more diversely trained professional staff than in the past. It also noted that most of the lab professional staff is trained at the Ph.D. level at universities throughout the country. "However, at present, there is a major problem in attracting U.S. citizens to consider Ph.D.-level training in the physical sciences," Wadsworth said. The committee recommended that the laboratory reaffirm its relationship with the UC Davis campus, as well as with other UC campuses. Graduate training programs at Livermore have offered courses in physics, computation and engineering in a balance designed to prepare scientists "to assume productive roles in applied research." Freeman envisions broadening course offerings beyond the traditional focus on physics, weapons sciences and computation into areas such as genome research, noting that UC Davis "has lots of scientists with expertise in genetics." Other areas in which applied science is recruiting for faculty and students include computer communications and fusion energy research. The Department of Applied Sciences also provides an opportunity to lab researchers to enhance their qualifications or redirect their careers by updating or learning new skills. Freeman would like to see the department grow substantially over the next couple of years from the current level of 80 graduates. This expansion will require additional faculty, and he hopes to draw a number of them from the ranks of lab scientists and engineers. "This is a great opportunity for re-searchers who have a desire to interact with young scientists to share what they know," Freeman says. "There's a mutual benefit. Students learn from veteran researchers and in turn bring new ideas to the lab." Applied science offers graduate students educational and hands-on research opportunities at the laboratory. While finishing her undergraduate work in physics at San Jose State University, Sony Lemoff was encouraged to apply to the UC Davis Livermore campus by a friend who was a student in the program at the time. During her first year, Lemoff attended seminars in which lab scientists and engineers discussed their work and the kind of research that graduate students would conduct in the program. "It gave me the flavor of what was inside the laboratory," she said. "It was a really good experience." Students attend seminars and take classes their first year and begin doing research in their second year as student employees. In their third year, students decide on a thesis topic and complete the work over the next two years. After her first year, Lemoff worked in the lab's H Division before moving to the Center for Micro Technology, where she currently conducts research in micro fluidics. "It's different from studying at a university," she says. "Here you're not wasting your time waiting to start doing research and you're making a contribution." Currently, UC Davis offers core research concentrations in: atomic and molecular physics; laser physics and nonlinear optics; plasma science and fusion engineering; microwave and millimeter wave electronics; material science and condensed matter physics; computational science; computer communications, and biotech and health- care technologies. The Livermore site of the Department of Applied Science is in Fannie and John Hertz Hall at the lab's East Gate. Hertz Hall's 10,000 square feet house classrooms, offices, a computer center and a departmental library. The Hertz foundation donated $500,000 for construction of a permanent building and this was matched by an equal sum from the UC Board of Regents. For more information, call 752-9787 or check the Web at:http://www.engr.ucdavis.edu/~das/ Don Johnston writes for Newsline, the weekly staff newspaper at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.